Minority, almost certainly, but "extremist"? It seems odd to want to invest somuch effort naming nature, but at the same time casually change the names tomatch today's classification. If we decoupled meaning from the names, we'd saveourselves (and biology at large) a lot of grief.

Regards

Rod

On 18 Jun 2012, at 22:42, Stephen Thorpe wrote:

but to change the names subsequently seems unjustified

says who? This is an extremist minority view (no offence!), no better than theopposite extreme whereby nomenclature must be one-to-one with (today's)phylogenetic hypotheses ...

It's more than changing endings, it's changing the genus in the first place thatI object to. It's all very well naming things, but to change the namessubsequently seems unjustified.

The assumption that only an expert is interested, or that expertise is readilyavailable, seems short-sighted. So we're producing knowledge that is useful toonly a few? We can't anticipate anyone being interested in these taxa down theline? If that's the case, then it's clearly there's not much point fundingtaxonomy ;)

Isn't it possible that as we see a flood of metagenomics and DNA barcoding wewill see people trying to make sense of those sequences, try to attach them totaxa that have been described (and for which we may have ecologicalinformation?). There will be people (like me) looking at sequences,distributions, phylogenies, trying to link this stuff together, only to beconfronted with a mass of names that make sense to some (possibly dead) expert.

Regards

Rod

On 18 Jun 2012, at 19:45, Quicke, Donald L J wrote:

Hi Rob and all

I am not sure what all this is about. I agree fundamentally that names shouldnot change gender endings, and people are not consistent with that despite whatthe codes say. fank Bisby was involved in writing software that could tellblaberius and blaberiae were possibly the same thing - whilst fuzzy, at leasttaht would flag issues.

But, as a practicing taxonomist who has revised many genera, the key thing is toknow what species names are associated with a genus. ideally also with a date,author name, and reference. But even with only a sp name, any expert in a groupwill eventually trace the publication or determine within reasonable doubt,nomina nuda ... and just get on with it. That's the job of the taxonomist - toknow which nominal taxa reasonably need to be considered, endeavour to findtheir types, and do the job.

In terms of making automated global databases, it's definitely an issue. But whoactually needs them? I know that that might sound like heresy, but please tellus who needs those names who is not already an expert or know/be-in-contact-withan expert.

For all the groups that (to some extent misguidedly though understandably)people use for global assessments (birds, mammals, butterflies, some plants,maybe some fish, reptiles and amphibians) it really doesn't much matter if validspecies totals for any one place are only 95% accurate.

If someone in say Unbangistan, gets bitten by a cobra, it is unlikely to matterthat the sp the local GP identified it as from their local field guide isactually a cryptic sp with a valid name lost in synonymy - the antivenom willeither work and they'll live or keep their arm, or they'll die or lose theirarm.

It is disheartening that having revised loads of genera, nearly all of the sppthat i have described or synonymised have never been published on since (exceptrarely by myself). They will be no doubt in 20, 40, 70, 100 years when someoneelse next revises the group. The vast majority of spp are not important in anyway that is currently understood. Of course some may be keystone spp, but we'llprobably never know.

Pure nomenclatural accuracy is seldom of any critical importance. It is sad, butfor most groups of organisms, that is true.

so, in creating spp lists for countries, regions, national parks, areas ofconservation concern, it simply is irrelevant whether they have 200, 1000, 5000spp of Noctuidae and what the exact names of those are. If they have 5000noctuids they probably also have 800 sp of birds, 100 of mammals and 500 ofbutterflies - i.e. they are a biodiverse place. If they have only 20 noctuidsthey are probably a disaster area or the arctic.

As far as i can tell, when a taxonomist revises any group, they usually have apretty good grasp of what spp names they have to deal with, locate types,descriptions of, etc.

donald

________________________________________
From: taxa...@mailman.nhm.ku.edu [taxa...@mailman.nhm.ku.edu] onbehalf of Roderic Page [r.p...@bio.gla.ac.uk]
Sent: 18 June 2012 19:18
To: taxacom
Subject: [Taxacom] Does the species name have to change when it moves genus?

OK, I know this is what we do, but my question is "why do we do this?"

As names change over time it becomes a major challenge to find everythingpublished about a taxon. Some groups, such as frogs, are especially prone toname changes as their classification is unstable. Frogs have a pretty goodonline database detailing name changes, but most animal groups lack this,leaving people like me floundering around trying to make sense of multiple nameswhy may or may not be for the same thing.

It seems to me that names should be unique and stable. We don't change the nameof a species called "africanus" if we discover that the specimen locality wasactually from Australia, nor do we change the name "maximus" if we subsequentlydiscover a bigger species. But we do if we move it to a new genus. Why?

Presumably it's because we like the idea of being able to interpret the name -two members of the same genus are presumably more closely related to each otherthan to a species in a different genus. But demonstrably that is often untrue(otherwise we wouldn't have all the name changes due to moving species todifferent genera), and we've learnt not to interpret the name literally wheninferring any biological attributes, so why the desire to have the name matchsome current notion of classification? Why not simply accept that we can't inferrelationships from the name?

It seems to be that if we simply stopped trying to make names reflectclassification, at a stroke we'd remove perhaps the primary cause ofnomenclatural instability. For example, the recent case of Drosophilamelanogaster would be a non-issue. It's "Drosophila melanogaster" regardles sofwhether it's nested in the part of the fly tree that includes Sophophora. Therelationships of the taxon would have no bearing on its name.

Discuss.

---------------------------------------------------------
Roderic Page
Professor of Taxonomy
Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine
College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences
Graham Kerr Building
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK

---------------------------------------------------------
Roderic Page
Professor of Taxonomy
Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine
College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences
Graham Kerr Building
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK

---------------------------------------------------------
Roderic Page
Professor of Taxonomy
Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine
College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences
Graham Kerr Building
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK